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I Have Come That They May Have Life Excerpts from Bainbridge House 2007 Christmas Letter... Advent season begets the Child; Madonna with child is emblematic of the primary Christian belief, the Incarnation. We are familiar with the African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child.” The Philadelphia Inquirer had a startling picture recently of the murdered police officer, Charles Cassidy, juxtaposed with his acknowledged killer, a manacled 21-year-old John Lewis. We may ask, what went wrong? Perhaps not enough models of goodness and hope to carry John over that critical tipping point where young men decide how to live. Some tend to label such men as almost beyond redemption. It is well to remember the young Saul, before he became Paul, the apostle. Saul attended the murder of Stephen, the young evangelist. We all indwell these parallel universes of good and evil; that hackneyed expression, “There but for the grace of God go I.” We need to sing “Joy to the World, the Lord is come,” but we would be remiss not to remember the parallel world of Iraq where at least 500,000 Iraqis have perished, as well as thousands of our own men and women, not too distant from Nazareth. We need to remember too, the parallel worlds─of all those named John and Charles, and countless others, right in our own backyards. These parallel worlds are not new: the angelic choir barely finished singing glory to God, over the infant Jesus, when “Herod was furious . . . fooled by the wise men. He had all the male children killed who were two years old or less.” The converted Paul tells us, “Love is stronger than death.” We need to be about life. |